Jonny Boy & Fiona Minx, originally uploaded by Chris Blakeley.

This weekend I had the pleasure of shooting the Can Can Castaways at a Bumbershoot. The owner of the club, Chris Snell, asked if was interested and I leapt at the chance. I knew it would be fun, I just didn’t imagine it would be this much fun.

I’ve been shooting at the Can Can for three years and have worked with the Castaways for about that long, so I’ve gotten used to both the space and their energy. I’ve also gotten used to some of my limitations when I go there. It can be relatively dark, so I bring a fast 35mm lens and shoot from an odd little stoop just off the stage. Considering how energetic the troupe’s acts are, I’m often working frantically to frame the shots at all and usually write off any hopes of getting a group shot. That’s just the nature of the venue.

So shooting them on Saturday in a different venue was actually something of a challenge. It wasn’t that I was trying to recreate the tight confines and frames, but the opposite.  With all that room and a decent zoom lens, I wasn’t quite sure how to shoot them.  I’d have remind myself that this time I could go from a group shot to a close up without leaning in my seat.  Little wonder I was struggling not shoot too many pictures. There I was with room and a zoom lens and extensive lighting and I was snapping photos like a mad man! I didn’t actually make a flip book, but it was a close thing at times. If I didn’t have to regularly swap out CF cards, I probably could have done it.  As it was, I took almost 1100 shots in less than an hour.

Oh but it was grand to shoot fast enough to clearly capture their leaps and spins. Hell, just to get a full body (or two) in the frame without having to crop out an arm in the process. I could get spoiled like this.

But for all that, I can’t help but think that I need to get back to the Can Can to shoot it “properly”. I love this work, I love these shots, but… it doesn’t really count, does it?  I need my shadows and my blurs.  I miss the relative frustration of trying to frame a rapidly spinning aerial act as he soars over the front row while I balance on a concrete step.

Yeah, I don’t get it either.  But it’s something to look forward to.

Yes, I’m really jaded about burlesque.

Yes, there are certain tropes and styles that I’ve seen enough of in the five years of the scene that I wouldn’t be sorry to not see them again for a while.

But I’d have to be either an idiot or the world’s worst liar to deny that I don’t enjoy the view.

“What’s your advice to photographers who want to get into burlesque?”
“Get a big flash…”

You could have heard my eyes rolling all the way in Vancouver, BC at this point.

OK, it’s not flash I have a problem with.  It’s bad flash photography.  If it’s done carefully and respectfully, I think it can be fantastic.  Most of what I’ve learned about event photography comes from reading forums dedicated to concert photography and I’ve seen some really nice work with a careful flash.  The problem comes with people who don’t bother with that, and blast the performer indeterminately, usually at full power.  That’s what I see most commonly and that’s when I want to drag out my soap box and my clue-by-four.

So here’s my soap box, my talking points against bad flash.

1)  Bad Flash is rude to the performer
I was talking with a local burlesquer (Vienne la Rouge, I think) who thanked me for not using flash.  She said there was nothing worse than performing in a dark room and being blinded by a bright flash when she was trying to look away from the spotlight.  Obviously this changes from venue to venue and performer to performer but I took it to heart.  I also experienced it myself at one point and she was right.  It can be very distracting and almost painful.  So I don’t.

2)  Bad Flash is rude to the audience
OK, a couple of flashes per show isn’t that annoying.  But I take 50 shots per act, which would be a headache.  Then there was the nightmare show a couple years ago.

So a local producer was putting on a show and made a deal with a bunch of local photographers that if they took publicity shots of the performers, she’d let them come shoot the show.  The night of the show, I remember there were seven or eight photographers in the balcony of the Columbia City Theater, all them with high power strobes, shooting often enough that the night took on the air of a catwalk.  Which is fine if that’s what you’re expecting to attend, far less satisfying if you’re taking in a performance.  One performer, a singer-songwriter, actually earned a fair wave of applause by asking the photographers to not shoot her act.  The show itself became something of a cautionary tale in the scene for a year or so afterward.

3)  Bad Flash is selfish
The flash is really only good for the photographer who uses it, nobody else.  Their camera is primed and ready for it and everyone else can deal.  Case in point, I took this shot:

before this one:

For all I know, his shot may have been stellar, but colored mine drastically.  No shadows, no subtlety, no lighting, just light.  Which leads me to my final point:

4) Bad Flash is Bad
I love the shadows in my photos.

I love getting the light and the atmosphere of the space, the intangibles that pull everything together in the moment:

And Bad Flash rips through that, tears down the atmosphere and leaves behind the drab reality of a stage. When the mood of the stage is ripped apart to reveal the dull rec room and its second hand lighting rig in the corner, that’s when the camera will be ready to capture the scene forever.

So, no, I think flash is the last thing a photographer should play with in a live setting.  First you learn about crazy ISOs and slicing time up in hundredths of a second and then, when you’ve found a venue that allows such things, you add in light when you have permission.  Until then, though, you leave well enough alone, perfectly prepared for every venue that actively forbids flash photography.

Like me, tomorrow night, shooting the Castaways in a larger venue in the Seattle Rep thanks to a well-timed press pass.

No flash? No problem.

I’m never sure what to make of compliments for my composition. Not that I can’t accept them (hardly) but that it’s not something I’m entirely conscious of anymore. During the show I’m shooting on a weird kind of creative autopilot, running on experience more than thought. It’s only when I look at the pictures later that I think about the hows and the whys of the photo.

So from the bottom of my unconscious, thank you.

Tassels & Emeralds 2, originally uploaded by Chris Blakeley.

The second issue of Tassels & Emeralds is in my grubby little paws and for sale online!

Wow.

I’m pleased. Which may be one of the grosser understatements ever uttered, but it’ll do for now. I’m still processing.

Now I’m trying to figure out what I want to do next because it keeps shifting when I think of it. I mean, it started as a 24-page “annual” that I’d put together to highlight my photography. As I worked on it and talked it out with my friends, they convinced me to expand it and so it doubled into two separate issues of 24-pages each.

As an annual, as a “program”, it’s grand but I’m thinking that I want to do more. When I started this, I couldn’t think of it as a magazine because then I’d just compare and contrast it with what you can get on a newsstand and fall apart at the thought. Now I think it’s easier to conceive of it as a magazine. Articles? Interviews? Hell, I don’t know, but I like the idea.

So the first two issues got that first “annual” out of my system and I already have the third issue mostly completed thanks to all the nervous energy from when I lost my job. Now I want to tear it down and fit in more.

Man, that’s exciting. And it’s not like I lack for free time, right?

I’m bad with names at the best of times. Even with people I’ve known for years, I’ll find myself offering vague “hellos” because I can’t for the life of me remember that was… Ross? Yeah, Ross!

But that’s normal, everyday life. Burlesque is different, right? Well, yeah, it’s hard to forget something like Inga Ingenue or Violet Tendencies, but I’ve known them for a while and may even know some of their offstage, out of drag names to boot. The newest performers, though, tend to skip off the surface of my memory simply because I’ve only seem them once or twice.

“This is [Alexandra] but she performs as [Boadicea Bazongas]!”
“Have you met [Vivian]? She’s with [Coastal Cuties], performs as [The Teak Temptress].”

TILT!

All the more embarrassing when they know my photography and greet me with with familiarity. It’s one thing to forget John from game night. Quite another to forget the woman in an outfit that riffs off a bird of paradise and leaves very little to the imagination.

“Chris, HI! Are you here to shoot the show?
“Great to see you, yeah…ummm…”

OK, not the greatest bit of drama I ever have to deal with, but after an Academy of Burlesque recital, I can’t help but feel like I’m happy to remember even one new name at the end of the night. It’s a point of pride. Or something.

And you are…?

Maybe that’ll be next week’s project?

The weekend was lovely for all that last week ended badly and today promises to be something of a roller coaster, but I’m going to do my best to keep this bit of simple joy near.

Wish me luck. I’ll write more later.

And sometimes my favorite shots are the simplest and (relatively) quietest.

No, I think the more significant – and unique – sacrifice arts workers make is that we lose the capacity for full, innocent and glorious enjoyment of the very art that our passion for drove us to make our life’s work in the first place. What do I mean by this? Think about your earliest experiences with the arts, your first encounter with Matisse, or Chuck Close; your first time in the audience for Sondheim, or Verdi; that time you first saw Baryshnikov on stage, or Judith Jamison. Remember that childlike joy – even if you were not a child – that total immersion in the art where the whole world disappeared and you were unaware of time, of the person chewing gum next to you? Now tell, me when was the last time you felt that? Sure, you are still passionate about the art form or all art forms, you still go to museums, or opera, or theatre, but something has been lost. Admit it. — Arts, Culture & Creativity

You can get an amen from this photographer. Because I hate the moments when the crowd goes wild for a performance that left me nonplussed.

Which isn’t to say that I approach every show with a clinical critical mindset or that I’m incapable of having fun when I’m shooting a show. I do and I have and I will see amazing performers and phenomenal shows. Hell, I’m eager for it. But I’ve seen so much burlesque that I find myself analyzing things unconsciously, idly noting the music and the themes. I watch and realize that I saw that same stocking move the other night or this is the third time that I’ve seen someone do a burlesque with a particular theme (bored housewife, anyone?).

For good and for ill, my experience flavors my appreciation for the form. Sure, that means there are nights that I find myself checking off boxes on a mental list but also nights where I have no choice but to cheer from the heart and laugh like a fool. Those are the shows that energize me and keep me coming back for more, when I can’t wait to see what I captured and share the results.

Which brings me back to those awkward nights of silence, the ones that have lead some of my friends to ask me why I still do this after five years.  If I can’t switch my brain off and just enjoy a show, what makes me do it?

It’s because I’m still a fan of burlesque.  I still love it.  I’m just not in love with it the same way I was when I saw the Bombshells first perform at the Mirabeau.  And I never will be, not really.  But that doesn’t mean it’s not fun.  It’s just different and it’s exploring that difference in my own unique orbit that makes me want to stay.